Automatic translation of a user identifier used in connection with a cellular network, an identifier such as the mobile station integrated services digital network number (MSISDN), and an identifier for the same user for use in connection with obtaining services from third party service providers (as opposed to the network operator) can be useful in some situations.
For example, a mobile user may wish to have a (third party) Internet service provider such as yahoo.com, called here an external service provider (ESP) such as an Internet Service Provider or ISP, provide weather reports according to some regular schedule. To arrange for the weather reports (multimedia messages), the mobile user connects to the Internet (via the cellular communication system) and sends yahoo.com a request that the weather reports be provided (according to a specified schedule) but without indicating the user's MSISDN, and instead indicating only the user's e-mail address (provided locally by Yahoo). The user might not want to tell the ESP the user's MSISDN in order to keep the MSISDN from becoming generally known, which would possibly result in the user being spammed (and having to pay for the spam).
Thus, it would be helpful to have a way to enable a mobile station in a cellular communication system to receive messages from an ESP without the ESP knowing the identifier of the mobile station used by the cellular communication system.